Brian's Fourth Blog: Film, Politics and PBS

http://www.pbs.org/

I teach a Politics and Film class at Windward Community College. There are so many films, and so little time, that it is very useful to have a resource that takes the study of film seriously. I had thought about commenting on www.imdb.com, but so much of the content at that site is trivia and there is no “for educators” section.

At the PBS site, on the other hand, the additional material connected to PBS shows is extensive, well-presented, and designed to encourage an educational engagement, even if the site is not used by people in a school setting. The keyword search allows you to find shows on virtually any topic, and even if many of the resources are tied to the specific content of the shows, they are easily reworked to be useful to many other educational situations. A search for “the invasion of Iraq”, for instance, yields an appealing website that has video excerpts, interviews, a chronology, readings and other resources that anyone interested in the Iraq war would find useful.


(by the way, did people hear that the first years of Sesame Street are now deemed "unsuitable" for children?)

Brian